Via RawStory:

Keeping track of all the scandals and malfeasance that have marked President George W. Bush’s two terms in office can prove rather taxing to even the most vigilant White House watchdog.

Now the online magazine Slate has created a handy visual aide pointing out which administration officials — including Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and scores of others — are implicated in various scandals.

The interactive Venn diagram gives Gonzales top honors as perhaps the most corrupt administration figure. Slate says Gonzales, who was White House counsel before becoming Attorney General, is implicated in all five scandals it studied: coercive interrogation, warrantless wiretapping, Justice Department hiring, Justice Department firing and CIA tapes.

“If this were The Sopranos, he’d be our Silvio,” Slate says, referring to Tony Soprano’s consigliere. (Even within theh White House, Gonzales had his own fictional-mobster-inspired nickname. The president reportedly referred to Gonzales, who had been with Bush since his time as Texas governor, as Fredo, a reference to Michael Corleone’s “weak” and “stupid” younger brother in The Godfather.)

SAHIMI:There is also no question in my mind that at the bottom the issue is that, as you pointed out, both the United States and Israel do not want Iran to become a major regional power. But Iran is already a major regional power: its enemies in Afghanistan and Iraq have been eliminated; it is on the verge of having complete uranium enrichment technology; it’s making $100 billion a year from exporting its oil; it has a dynamic population of 75 million, two-thirds of whom are below the age of thirty; it has a very highly dynamic and educated population, as a matter of fact, and it is sitting in the most strategic area of the world [inaudible] on the shores of Persian Gulf, where 70 percent of all the oil produced by Middle East passes through Strait of Hormuz that is controlled by Iran. So Iran is already a major regional power.

…

Iran is not Iraq. Iranian nationalism is extremely strong. If Iran is attacked by the United States and/or Israel, Iran will respond and retaliate in a very dramatic fashion. Unlike what some neocons recently said, like Patrick Clawson and people like him, Iran has full capability for retaliation. And if Iran does retaliate-and I believe it will retaliate if it is attacked-then the whole region will be engulfed in war and blood, and will spread to the rest of the world. This is not what we want. As peaceful people, this is what we want: what we want is to keep that region away from the confrontation between Iran, Israel, and the United States. And the only way to do that is not to threaten Iran, but rather to negotiate with Iran; the way to do it is not to threaten militarily or impose sanctions on Iran, rather to negotiate with Iran. I think Iranian leaders, as bad as they might be internally, are interested in negotiating and reaching a solution with the United States and through the United States with Israel. And I think we should take that path and try to reach an agreement in Iran.

Over at Mindfully.org you can find hundreds of big and small literary and informational treasures for those interested in peering through the veils of darkness that the media does it’s best to pull over our eyes with all of their well practiced smoke and mirrors.

One such is in the Political/Social category. An article titled Beyond Voting that is particularly relevant this year.

Here’s an excerpt, but the entire thing is worth a close read, and some intense discussion or at least much thought, IMHO…

Roughly speaking we can distinguish five degrees of “government”:

       (1) Unrestricted freedom

       (2) Direct democracy

       (3) Delegate democracy

       (4) Representative democracy

       (5) Overt minority dictatorship

The present society oscillates between (4) and (5), i.e. between overt minority rule and covert minority rule camouflaged by a facade of token democracy. A liberated society would eliminate (4) and (5) and would progressively reduce the need for (2) and (3). . . .

…

In representative democracy people abdicate their power to elected officials.

The candidates’ stated policies are limited to a few vague generalities, and once they are elected there is little control over their actual decisions on hundreds of issues – apart from the feeble threat of changing one’s vote, a few years later, to some equally uncontrollable rival politician.

This post was inspired by OPOL’s  Mitakuye Oyasin – All My Relations and pfiore8’s comment last night in notlightnessofbeing’s essay Wondering… that he posted in response to my own essay Change You Can Believe In… or Honestly, Would I Lie To You?, and by Robyn’s Muse In The Morning today.

In efforts to strengthen his somewhat faltering presidential bid after last weeks shuffle to the center to the right in his reversal of a long held campaign promise with his support for preemptively pardoning retroactively legalizing years of Bush criminal behavior and expanded domestic surveillance at the low, low price of gutting your fourth amendment rights, Barack Obama has made more major position “adjustments” with changes to his campaign website today.

The AP reports about an hour ago: Obama Web site removes ‘surge’ from Iraq problem

Barack Obama’s aides have removed criticism of President Bush’s increase of troops to Iraq from the campaign Web site, part of an effort to update the Democrat’s written war plan to reflect changing conditions.

…

McCain said Obama is failing to acknowledge success. “Today, we know Sen. Obama was wrong” to oppose the surge, McCain said.

As first reported Tuesday by the New York Daily News, Obama’s campaign removed a reference to the surge as part of “The Problem” section on the part of his Web site devoted to laying out his plan for Iraq.

The change was part of many broader changes that Obama spokeswoman Wendy Morigi said were made to reflect current conditions.

Designed to appeal to the center right likely in hopes of drawing voters away from the McCain camp, which he’ll need to replace progressive support lost over FISA, Obama takes more steps towards offering another “Bush Third Term” coke or pepsi choice between himself and McCain to voters this year.

The AP article continues…